


"An UrRu's Hate"

by SunderedAndUndone



Series: The Dialogues [2]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Confrontations, Gen, Skeksis - Freeform, Urskeks, mystics, urRu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunderedAndUndone/pseuds/SunderedAndUndone
Summary: A philosophical debate on the emotion of hate winds up getting slightly more personal than intended. Roughly Day 40?
Relationships: skekGra & urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Dialogues [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616017
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23





	1. Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which curiosity kills the ego -- er, the Fizzgig.

SkekGra the Conqueror snorted at UrGoh the Wanderer—the same indulgent kind of snort they’d offer a Gelfling merchant trying to push a cart of overripe produce on the last day of fair.

“Nonsense,” they were declaring, with easy finality. “There’s no such thing as life without hate. Everyone hates. Even dumb beasts hate. You can’t just _decide_ not to feel a thing.”

They flicked a decisive chip off their latest whittling project, a miniature of one of those fiendish Gruenak trebuchets. They had a bagful of such miniatures, crafted over many trine, wrapped in fleece and jealously guarded. Gelfling lieutenants always understood a battle plan better when it could be illustrated with real figurines, instead of trying to make the light pebbles stand for one thing and the dark ones for another, and the seed-cones for something else again. (To be fair, it made things easier to remember for the Conqueror too.)

“And why would you want to?” they went on. “Hate exists for a reason. It’s a teacher. It helps you survive. It tells you who your enemies are. Otherwise, how would you know?”

UrGoh just shook their head in reply, the impossibly fine-spun hair of their mane wafting like a pale-red curtain in the warm air from tonight’s campfire. “Not everyone…has enemies.”

“That’s nonsense as well! Everyone has _someone_ who’d benefit from harming them. How can anybody so well-traveled be so naïve?” SkekGra marveled. “How’ve you managed not to kill us both by getting yourself robbed and murdered yet? You’re not a difficult target. Maybe the Stonewood are right, maybe Thra does protect fools and drunks.”

If the Wanderer took exception to “fool” or “drunk,” they didn’t show it—only tilted their long snout and gave it the same maddeningly calm consideration they gave everything else.

“I…suppose a creature who’s… _deliberately_ made many enemies…would be obliged…to feel that way,” they said. “But that…is not the only way to live. I haven’t been attacked…in hundreds of trine.”

Then they frowned. “That could…be thanks to you,” they allowed. “To the tales…the Skeksis spread of us. Many still receive me with kindness…but now there’s always some…fear as well. Except—”

SkekGra, who by now rather preened themselves on their expertise with their bizarre companion’s speech rhythms, decided to be exceptionally gracious and allow this one a count of twenty before doing any prodding. They were curious to hear more about the lasting effects of that ancient propaganda campaign, authored by the Skeksis’ Chamberlain, then spread by both the Conqueror (dutifully) and the General (grumblingly).

It thankfully turned out to be twelve instead of twenty. “Except—the childlings,” the UrRu rumbled at last. “Who are, after all, wiser. They love the puppets, the juggling…and the sleight of hand. It’s only their parents…who sometimes drag them away.”

“Kindred spirits, perhaps,” the Conqueror jeered, but it came out far less haughty than they’d hoped. Something unbecomingly close to envy came over them as they thought back to that time, almost an unum ago now, when they’d watched UrGoh doing their “magic” for a gaggle of Spriton sprouts on the road to Sami. It wasn’t real magic, of course (well, mostly not)…but in a way, that was actually more impressive. They just made it look so easy. For all the Wanderer’s sluggishness, they _were_ funny and witty, and something you could even mistake for wise if you squinted. Their stories were inane, but charmingly so. A few minutes in, and the little Gelfling had forgotten the looming Conqueror was even there. The Conqueror was not used to being forgotten.

SkekGra could be charming too; one surprisingly had to be, in their line of work. But it was of a different kind that took much more attention and care not to be _too_ anything: too loud, too manic, too sudden, too fierce, too overwhelming. They certainly never had childlings hanging off their skirts begging for a berry or a joke. How much easier Conquering without even a fight would be, if they did—

But there, this _was_ UrRu sorcery, making their Skeksis half entertain jealousy over something so ludicrous. As though the Conqueror would seriously stoop to being a jester for their own subjects-to-be, even if it won an entire nation overnight?

“You’re trying to change the subject,” SkekGra said crossly. “If our tales that you’re so unhappy about actually help you stay unmolested on the road, well, you’re welcome! But we weren’t talking about childlings. We’re talking about things that are hateful. Arathim—Gruenaks—Makraks. Vile, dangerous creatures. Big lumbering ruminant that you are, I _know_ the Arathim would eat you as soon as look at you. They’ve eaten hundreds of your beloved Gelfling and Podlings! Even them you don’t hate?”

“…No,” UrGoh answered, though there was an odd refraction of light in their eyes that, in retrospect, should have given the Conqueror warning.

SkekGra threw their hands up. “In all these trine, there’s never been a single creature in all Thra that you hated?”

“Yes.”

That brought SkekGra up quite short, and they were just about to ask or rather _demand_ whether “yes” now meant yes or no or nothing at all, when the UrRu added somberly:

“You.”

* * *

  
SkekGra went to leap to their feet, then had an instant of profound confusion on realizing they were already there.

“I knew it. _I knew it!_ ” they shrilled. “—Or…I always suspected…that was how you felt.”

They stared at UrGoh, a bit numbly. The “always” in this case was many hundreds of trine ago, in their newborn days when they weren’t sure the name they remembered for themselves was actually their name, or that what they were calling their micro-species of sixteen individuals— _Skeksis_ —was even a word. (Not that that’d ever stopped a Skeksis from pretending to believe something, mind.)

Their brief memories of the raw being that would eventually become UrGoh the Wanderer were even foggier. There’d been spirals, spirals everywhere on the creature’s naked twilight-colored skin, occult etchings the Skeksis felt loath to gaze at more than a brief moment for fear of somehow falling in. There’d been close-set, almost crossed eyes of a warm yellowish amber, snapped open in surprise, staring back at SkekGra with something like the air of a jilted bride…an accusation perhaps, of some crime or other? Though what it could have been was utterly beyond SkekGra in that moment, and how _dare_ this thing have looked at them so—worse, how dare it look at them in the exact same way _now_ , as though the entire Age that lay between the two moments hadn’t happened at all?

But no, that wasn’t right. The puffed, deepened grooves around those amber eyes, a certain narrow caution in the way they focused and refocused now, showed how much they—both of them—really had aged.

The Conqueror attempted to recapture a nonchalant tone and succeeded in hitting laconic.

“Well! Good thing you changed your mind, or this would all be awkw—”

They stuttered to another halt.

The halt stretched itself out.

_“…Oh.”_

Even as SkekGra said it, the Wanderer’s eyes squeezed shut; their endless neck bowed low. They gripped their staff, leaning heavily into it, as though even the giant flat rock they sat on weren’t enough support. They looked like a melting dessert. SkekGra soon recognized it as an exaggerated version of what happened to Gelfling adjutants who were having to report a setback to their Conqueror: _guilt_. But why? Who’d failed whom? This was not how hate worked among Skeksis!

Yet the UrRu said nothing, refusing to so much as look at SkekGra anymore.

“Fine,” SkekGra burst out. “It doesn’t matter why. It does make me wonder just what you think you’re doing here. But you don’t want to explain and I don’t want to _starve_ to death _while_ you explain. So.”

The Skeksis turned on their heel and headed for their tent. Enough of feeling like the rope in a tug-of-war. Time to distract oneself with something useful. Food sounded good, come to think of it. SkekGra could fix one of their own campaign stews, there could be some tooth and savor in it for once. They could even wait to throw in the salted Nebrie till the blasted ruminant had ladled out a bowl for themselves—

The Conqueror whirled round again. “But _why_??” they implored.

UrGoh still didn’t answer—just kept deflating.

“What did I ever do to you?”

After what seemed an eternity, the UrRu finally shook that ponderous head. Well, it wasn’t dead.

“You,” the Wanderer murmured, then fell silent _again_.

“Go on!” SkekGra was suddenly shouting, a full-on cawing racket. “Spit it out! You’re being all honest, don’t stop now! Uggghh, it’s like wading through Sog!”

“YOU…” UrGoh repeated, in a deep boom that easily drowned out the Conqueror’s screeches. They bent a gaze like an arc of electric discharge up at the Skeksis. SkekGra shut up, torn between fascination at having actually forced a response and dread at what it might turn out to be.

But the spark was gone as soon as it had flared. Each new word seemed to be a titanic effort for the UrRu; still, they plodded on to the finish, a strange hardness in their placid, wrinkled face.

“…show…our failure…to all the world.”

There weren’t many more incendiary words the Wanderer could have used.

“Failure!” SkekGra echoed in shock. _“Failure!?”_

They drew themselves up almost totally erect, ruff-feathers pricked, neck curved like a snake readying to strike. In some dim corner of their mind they knew they were being every single one of the _toos_ —they were coming down on this hapless creature that barely ever made a sour _face_ as hard as if they were a Skeksis trying to insult their way to a thrashing. But that awareness was too far away to be gentled by.

_“I am the Conqueror!!”_ they thundered. “Who are _you_? What have you done in all this time? My victories are sung across Thra!”

The Wanderer remained more weary than frightened, though they did aim a strained glance at their dark counterpart.

“Your—butcheries,” they replied, in tones of utmost sorrow. “Your burnings. Yes, you are…famed.”

“ _Here_ we go—” SkekGra shot back with venom. The next glance they got was an actively warning one. They yielded to it, unchastened, but accepting that this conversation would only continue on terms they could both tolerate. And the Conqueror found they did… _want_ to hear the rest, the worst. At least, they thought they did.

They sat down, scoffing. “Fine, I’m listening. To the bitter end.”

UrGoh leaned on the staff again, looking away into the glaring nothingness that the surrounding woods became once the evening's fire was lit. SkekGra couldn’t see their face as a result, but the voice held more than enough emotion to read.

“Everything we…struggled against inside us,” they continued. “Everything we fought…so long to hide… _you_ wear proudly…in the hideous flesh.”

( _Hideous_ flesh?)

And the UrRu wasn’t done yet. They took an ominously deep breath. “Your bloody talons. Your…disgusting appetites. The terror with which others…speak your name. And _we_ …set you loose on an innocent world. You are…my nightmare,” they said heavily, and then finished, even more heavily—

“As you were GraGoh’s.”


	2. Unthinkable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which crimes are confessed.

The Wanderer heard nothing for several long moments. This would have been no cause for concern or even remark, had they been talking with one of their fellow UrRu back in the village of the Mystics. But this was no Mystic, and at length UrGoh became worried about whether something pointy was being silently aimed at their back, and made themselves look around.

The worry at once proved itself irrational. No weapons in evidence anywhere, and the Skeksis was visibly dazed—almost faint. As though the Wanderer had clubbed them over the head with a stick, which in a way they supposed they had.

When the Conqueror finally spoke, it was in a thin vague voice as well, quiet enough to turn their characteristic rasp almost into a purr.

“I’m—going to bed,” they said. “Early start tomorrow.”

UrGoh nodded in reply. The Skeksis clearly meant to make another break for it, and the UrRu felt a hope (embarrassingly self-serving, but they’d have to rebuke themselves for that later) that this time they would succeed. Surely the rest could wait for the morning, if not the following trine?

It was doomed. No sooner had SkekGra risen to their feet than they immediately sank back down onto the shelf of rock, their face dropping into an even slacker blank that was even less pleasant to behold. The metaphorical stick had now become a tree.

The Wanderer felt a lurch as the kind of soul-certainty only another facet of one’s own being could transmit overpowered them; they realized that the Skeksis had just _realized_. Possibly beating the Skeksis to the realization of that realization by an instant—but an instant wasn’t enough time to head anything off, or even begin to try to explain—

“Dear Thra,” SkekGra breathed. “That’s what happened, isn’t it.”

They turned to UrGoh, patently horrified.

“That day, at the Crystal…when we were sundered.”

Wheels had begun to spin behind the Conqueror’s eyes, to interlock deftly and pivot toward the now-preordained conclusion. UrGoh had no desire to watch. They closed their own eyes again, clenched their teeth. The wheels turned on regardless, of course.

“You tried to kill me.” A soft, sharp inhalation. “You wanted me _dead!_ ”

There it was: the conversation the Wanderer had honestly expected (hoped?) to die without ever having. What they’d imagined would happen next was…

Well, it wasn’t. It was a nonexistence, a null. For the last nine days or so they’d been aware of a creeping, growing _possibility_ of the thing. After all, if there was some way to accomplish their joint project, so to speak, without dealing with the subject, the Wanderer didn’t know it. Yet whenever they’d tried to think it through, it always shuddered to a stop just before the precipice they’d now tumbled gracelessly off of. Which was frustrating; UrGoh may have been more restless than their fellow Mystics, but they weren’t any less contemplative. Indeed, they’d always found walking the literal roads of Thra excellent accompaniment to traveling the mental ones.

And UrRu were supposed to be good at doing this, even _too_ good at doing this—patiently untangling the skeins of fate, seeing the hundreds of permutations that arose from every knotted branch in the threads, from every event or decision. Mainly so they could then stay as far away from those knots as possible, but still. This’d been less like following threads and more like…sitting in a boat about to go over a waterfall, peering through the rainbow-spattered spray and trying to determine from its patterns exactly where the edge was, or (even more impossibly) what the bottom would look like.

They wondered how long SkekGra had been waiting for a response.

“I…” they began, more to signal that they did intend to speak than that they had any idea what they were about to say. They decided to carry on, even if it meant being as much a spectator to this as their counterpart. Thra grant that their rising nausea wouldn’t turn into literal retching. Perhaps pointing their nose at something other than the dirt would help? They gingerly raised their head toward the Skeksis, though to their great dismay, they couldn’t get the rest of their body to follow suit.

They tried again, forcing the words past a dry throat. “I… _we_ …wanted to be… _purified._ So…we could go home…”

“And I was the impurity you needed destroyed!” SkekGra was rapidly returning to life, energy and outrage coming back to share what space they could with disbelief—though those wild crimson eyes remained more dilated than they should have been in the firelight.

“Not—destroyed. Just…gone.”

“Scant difference, _murderer_!”

This was, at minimum, not a fair way of putting it. Things had been nowhere near that simple. SkekGra was the last being on Thra who had any business talking about murder. And as ashamed as UrGoh was of the identity they were compelled to share with the ravening Conqueror, they’d never been sure how much blame they, a mere half, should really accept for the dimly-remembered actions of this ineffable alien… _ghost_. No other kind of creature in the world had to worry about such absurd and surreal questions, which had also never seemed quite fair.

But the word _murderer_ still lightened their head as they answered in a thicker voice, “We…didn’t…know—”

“So you thought you could just get rid of me,” concluded the Conqueror, acidly. “But it didn’t work—and instead, _THIS_ happened to us!” A derisive flap of the claws encompassed and dismissed them both: two heaps of aging flesh, one spindly, one lumpy. Both ridiculous.

UrGoh’s shoulders slumped in defeat and acknowledgment.

“And now…I have…almost no power…to restrain you.”

* * *

At first, SkekGra looked very much as though they wanted to say something to that, like _Restrain the Conqueror, fool?_ or _Do I look in the market for a nursemaid?_ or maybe _Who died and left you that job?_ (Funny, how easily those rejoinders popped into the Wanderer’s head while they were just looking at each other.) Then they turned away; shifted their seat on the rock; inadvertently knocked their little woodcarving off and sent it sailing almost too close to the fire; hastily rescued it; and finally tossed it into an open bag at their feet. They heaved a wintry sigh.

“So this _is_ all your fault.”

The UrRu frowned deeply—perilously close to a scowl, in truth. “You…made it necessary,” they pointed out.

“Necessary!” squawked the Skeksis. “That’s one amazing argument from a Mystic. How cold are you?” They gestured back toward their tent: a confusing non sequitur, until they went on and the Wanderer divined that they were indicating where their swords, armor, and all that were.

“I kill in battle. I kill for the Empire. I—might have beheaded a few rabble who picked the wrong day to defy me. I wouldn’t kill someone…just…for making me _look_ bad?” they finished, on a bewildered note.

Put that way, it did sound cold-blooded. UrGoh didn’t feel cold-blooded. They weren’t at all sure what they felt. But they knew, or thought they knew, what GraGoh would have wanted of them in this moment—and what Thra had all but commanded. It was not too much to ask that the light half at least _try_ to shine. They gave a drawn-out sigh of their own, nodding.

“I _was_ …foolish…and weak…where we meant…to be strong and wise.”

Then the UrRu sought, and met, the unnerving predator gaze of their dark half. “I ask…your forgiveness.”

This really was speaking less for themselves and more for It, for the UrSkek. Yet the Wanderer found to their astonishment that for once that felt strangely like an honor, not a guilt-ridden burden. As though in the very saying of it, a burden lifted off their shoulders. How odd.

The Conqueror evidently thought it odd too. They were quite taken aback.

“My forgiveness?” they repeated.

They grasped the stiff fabric of their outer skirt and let it go, fitfully. “I—I don’t know. I’ve never forgiven anyone before.” They blinked. “I…don’t know if I _can_.”

The Wanderer was opening their mouth to ask how such a thing could even be, when the Skeksis shook themselves almost exactly like a bird in a birdbath and leaned toward UrGoh with a suddenly, startlingly wretched expression on their death-mask of a face.

“Why should you want that from one you despise?” they demanded. “It doesn’t make any sense. UrGoh, why are you _here_?—And _don’t_ tell me it’s because you had a vision, or Thra told you to, or worst of all from pity. I won’t have your pity!”

(Pity? The mighty Conqueror was afraid the Wanderer pitied them?)

UrGoh thought about it.

“I am here,” they said, “because you are here.”

Which was obviously of no help; SkekGra only looked more lost.

“I didn’t know…if you would be,” clarified the UrRu.

Now it seemed to sink in. The Skeksis put their sharp elbows on their knobby knees and laced their talons together, staring at the ground. “I…didn’t know if either of us would,” they admitted.

UrGoh hummed. “Yet here you are. You came…in answer to Thra’s call. That means…GraGoh _is_ in you.”

The Conqueror shivered, and said nothing. The Wanderer decided to take it as tentative encouragement, adding, “In…both of us.”

The fire’s cheerful crackle filled the silence, gently cushioning the space between thought and speech. Or rather, UrGoh was at last able to notice it again, and to feel the warmth that lay in the sound as much as the light. The notion came to them that they’d do better at these chats in future if they could only remember to listen to the crackle, scent the woods, feel the air. In other words, be as present as possible to their senses and the surroundings, no matter what else was happening. Even if the tensions made that difficult; even if it was only the very crude perceptions of a limited, earthbound body. And it would set the right example. They would remind themselves next time.

SkekGra was still struggling to work out some kind of emotional algebra over there, but that was fine. A few very important things had been established. Among them, the fresh fact that it was possible to wear out even a Skeksis warlord’s temper.

… _And_ that they, UrGoh, docile ‘ruminant,’ could do at least one terrifying thing that they’d never in a million trine have thought they possessed the strength for, a thing every other UrRu believed tantamount to apocalypse. Yet, although their own fingers still trembled a bit from residual nerves, the three sisters above them rode the night sky serenely and the fire hadn’t so much as sputtered in protest. The unthinkable turned out to be not only thinkable, but—done.

It did raise the question, what else might fall into that category.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: Fiction is just loving sadism practiced on imaginary people.


	3. Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Wanderer and the Conqueror both find themselves rather odd.

The Dousan had a saying, “If you would truly know someone, travel with them.”

The Wanderer had had company on their endless road now and again, and not always fellow UrRu. Usually only for a few days—once or twice for as much as an unum. And mostly in the earlier part of the present Age, when folk were still more curious than suspicious, and even Podlings and Gelfling sometimes traveled together for both safety and company.

Once, such things went unremarked on because they wouldn’t have struck anybody as remarkable. Now they went unremarked on because they simply didn’t happen anymore…and no one seemed to notice the lack. The only Podling friends Gelfling ever had these days were body-servants to highborn masters and mistresses, and although that could breed an intimacy that was sometimes deep and true, it really just wasn’t the same thing, and all Podlings knew it.

As for large, slow, mysterious, dusty four-armed wizards like walking hillocks? There _had_ been a time when UrVa could wander openly into Stone-in-the-Wood with some of their exquisite fletching-work to sell, and be greeted with a foaming bowl of brew and a call for a song; when UrSan could ask at Cera-Na for the latest dashing tales of the great SkekSa, and have the Sifa innocently pouring all the news into their ear.

A time when UrGoh themselves could occasionally join up with a caravan bound for the great trade fair in the Ha’rar foothills—share a pipe with a Spriton farmer, listen to colicky Stonewood babies cry, throw a little something sweet and aromatic into the communal soup pot—and feel for the briefest moment not like some lone foreign chronicler of Thra’s peoples, but just one more of their number. UrSu would have disapproved (they never liked Mystics to “involve” themselves in “indigenous” affairs, even trivially), but UrSu disapproved of many things they had no intention of actually trying to stop. UrGoh suspected their style of life had always been on that list regardless, and besides, what the Master did not know would not worry them.

Those days were long gone in any case. That was in no small part the doing of the Wanderer’s new traveling companion. And not only didn’t the Conqueror have the decency to _pretend_ to care about it, the Wanderer wasn’t sure they even grasped yet why the UrRu took it amiss.

Nonetheless, the Dousan proverb was accurate. Over an unum since their meeting at the First Crossroads, UrGoh and SkekGra had now reached a point where conversations were picked up and put down like household objects—continued from sometimes hours or days before, without introduction or confusion on either of their parts.

Thus it was that the Wanderer barely blinked when SkekGra suddenly relaunched the argument of the previous evening right in the middle of their breaking camp. The Skeksis had palpably been building up to something, dropping tent poles on the ground a bit too loudly, or looking at the UrRu as if to speak and then just emitting a gurgling noise somewhere between sigh and growl.

And when UrGoh stopped partway through the endeavor for a break, a smoke, and a few notes in their journal, that was of course the time the Conqueror chose to plop themselves down on the neighboring rock and announce in an already-combative tone, “I didn’t _choose_ to be built like this, you know.”

The Wanderer looked at SkekGra a moment, finished the word they were on, then set their journal down open-faced beside them, weighting the pages with a little carved rock-pendant bookmark so the fresh ink could dry.

“Yes?” they replied calmly.

“I said I didn’t choose this—form. Any more than…well, I’m presuming…you chose yours. It was chosen for me. Or it happened by accident, one of the two.”

“I know,” said UrGoh.

The Skeksis appeared stymied. Evidently they’d somehow expected disagreement.

“…Of course you didn’t,” the UrRu added a moment later, gently but inquiringly, in what was surely a lifelong first—the _Wanderer_ prompting someone _else_ (and a Skeksis at that) to get to the point.

SkekGra gave a nonplussed huff and spluttered on: “There are people who find Skeksis _attractive_ , you know. I’ve had propositions. Plenty!”

UrGoh looked the Conqueror up and down.

“…Recently?”

The Conqueror thrust up a finger. “ _NOT_ the point. Point is, if you find me so hideous, you can take that up with Thra and its suns-cursed Crystal.”

The Wanderer felt inclined to shrug all four shoulders. After all, no one was lining up to discover whether and how Mystics made love either (and the one time something like that had happened, UrGoh was so utterly unready for it that the Gelfling in question was miles away before the UrRu realized anything had been on offer. Likely just as well). Skeksis vanity, on the other hand, was legendary. The Wanderer found it no more appealing in their own dark half than in any of the others. Honestly, out of everything that had been so painfully revealed in last night’s conversation, this was what the self-besotted Conqueror fixated on?

…Unless it wasn’t _only_ vanity.

Unless it was just possible SkekGra did care what UrGoh, the lumbering ruminant, thought of them. That they were genuinely troubled to hear their own counterpart considered them repellent, and couldn’t fathom why anyone else would want to touch or even look at them, either. Was that possible?

SkekGra had turned partly away, toward the dead ashes of the fire. The downy ruff around their neck, and the miscellany of jointed spines and slender quills that trailed out of it onto their back, puffed out somewhat. Which of course generally meant aggression; but it _was_ in a different arrangement from the usual, more uneven, almost frazzled. Their arms—both the lean but powerful front ones and the preposterous little hind ones—were visibly being held still, while their tail, which hadn’t been informed of the plan, snaked listlessly in the dirt. And their eyes roved, alighting everywhere in the dismantled campsite except on their Mystic half.

“Let me see your hand,” rumbled UrGoh at last.

 _“No,”_ the Skeksis returned icily.

The Wanderer reached out. “Please..?”

An exceptionally loud silence met this, and UrGoh was surmising the two of them had finished for the morning, when the Conqueror made a heavy _tsk_ noise and—still not looking at UrGoh—wordlessly surrendered their front-left hand.

* * *

Not without a prick of mildly superstitious dread, the Wanderer took their dark half’s hand up and let it spread open across their own. Would it feel as hard and pitiless as it looked? Like the murderous implement it had so often been?

The answer was yes, on the sinewy back side with its bulbous knuckles, and the one claw they could bring themselves to touch was hornlike, dry and ridged. But the palm, though short compared to the talons, had some padding on it, and was lightly lined almost like a Gelfling’s. The fingertips, too, were softer than the Wanderer expected.

…Or was that what they were feeling?

Something very strange was going on with the way the sliding of skin on skin registered, but UrGoh couldn’t begin to tell what it was. Struck by an idea, the Mystic switched which hand was doing what—so they were now supporting the Skeksis’ front-left hand with their hind-left hand, while their front-right hand did the exploring.

 _Now_ , the only front hand that should be getting any brushing or pressing sensations was the right front. Yet that wasn’t so. They still felt it in their front-left fingertips as well, despite the fact that nothing was touching that hand anymore. In other words, phantom fingers…which weren’t phantoms at all.

Rather, the “phantom” fingers were their own. The rhythm, the pattern of movement mirrored exactly. If they traced a circle in the Skeksis’ palm, it echoed in their palm. UrGoh’s front-left hand was feeling what SkekGra’s front-left hand felt…as though it _were_ SkekGra’s hand. Thus giving an eerie double impression of being both toucher and touched. And that wasn’t all; as it went on, it somehow started becoming less clear whose hand felt bony and whose felt soft, an even more vertiginous experience.

What _was_ it like to live with those rapacious claws under one’s eyes all day? Did it affect how Skeksis saw themselves, as much as how others saw them? Did the tool shape the crafter against their own will, the way a carpenter with a hammer can only hammer, and one with a file can only file? The Wanderer tried to imagine it—looking in a still pool and seeing that harsh beaked face, so obviously designed for the carnivorous end of omnivore, staring back.

If UrGoh woke up one morning and their body had by some dark geomancy been traded for SkekGra’s, could they stay a Mystic…even on the inside?

A handful of times in their long life, the Wanderer had out of nowhere found themselves submerged in the nightmare, or the waking flash, of feeling that they’d become the Conqueror—suddenly seeing a very different part of Thra, and through alien eyes. Gelfling troops in formation and a heavy sword in hand, or suffocating corridors filled with rough cawing voices and hulking forms. But it was never for more than the briefest of spans. They never allowed it to be. If something like that happened to one of the Mystics in the village and they couldn’t immediately come out of it, UrSu, UrSol, and UrZah were all three summoned at once, and appeared with alacrity.

The UrRu frowned up at the Conqueror, who had a peculiar and wholly appropriate look on their face, and was working their right-front hand uncomfortably, like an elderly artisan trying to get rid of stiff joints.

“Do you…feel that?”

“I…think so,” said SkekGra in a low, awed voice. “But I don’t understand. I thought all we shared was pain. — _Easy_ with it! You’ll give me the crawlies.” They shuddered.

“Right,” UrGoh agreed readily, especially as an answering shudder rippled through them. But they didn’t let go of the Skeksis’ hand—just went over it mostly with eyes now, instead of fingers.

“It is…lithe…nimble…and strong,” they murmured deliberatively. SkekGra didn’t quite _relax_ at those words, but they did unwind by perhaps a quarter-turn, and their lower jaw went slightly crooked in a way the Wanderer had learned to interpret as a smile. “But the talons…must make some tasks…difficult?”

“Only occasionally. I can clip them if I really need to.” The Skeksis lifted their gaze to meet UrGoh’s for the first time since they’d turned away. “But I don’t like it. Being—defenseless.”

UrGoh hummed. All this was going to need meditation to put in any kind of order. Probably a full mandala. But no hurry, rarely a hurry. “Mm. Thra must have known that…to give them to you.”

“As I _said_ ,” the Conqueror reminded them with a slight bitter edge.

“Yes…”

“All right. Well, fair is fair. Let’s see yours.”

* * *

By the time they were taking the Mystic’s heavy hand into their own, the Conqueror had accepted that they should have no idea what to expect. Almost everything was beggaring expectation now, so what would be the point.

But they were _curious_ to learn what the uncanny illusion felt like going in the other direction. Why had SkekGra never noticed this before? Did it only occur when they and their counterpart touched? Had it been happening all along, but they’d simply been ignoring everything that wasn’t an actual injury…maybe for their own sanity? Or had they caused this just today by indulging in this sacrilege, and now it’d never go away again?

The Emperor had warned them all in the starkest terms, with the Ritual-Master concurring: no, the Mystics might not really be luring Gelfling into the woods to turn them into crawlies or trap their spirits in glass vials, but that didn’t make them harmless. Not to Skeksis. It was _Skeksis_ souls they wanted to collect. It was the Lords of Thra they wished to suborn and overthrow with their patient wiles—to recapture the Crystal and Castle they knew they’d never seize in a fair fight.

The Emperor lied an awful lot, but a thing like this did make the Conqueror wonder if there was accidental truth in it. Perhaps this was the hand of a tempter, an Arduff in Nurloc’s clothing. Perhaps UrGoh still wanted to kill SkekGra, even after all this. Perhaps GraGoh did.

Bah. Useless wheel-spinning. They were already here. One did not dare and then _un_ -dare, or at least, not the Conqueror. So SkekGra looked down and tried to inspect the infamous thing they held with a less…scattered mind.

Spirals again—spirals everywhere, flowing in eddies across the palm, fingers, and knuckles. Just as on the rest of the skin, but smaller and shallower. Thank the Crystal, it didn’t have the same hypnotic pull the Conqueror remembered from the day of the sundering. But as they took better stock, they realized the patterns weren’t mere decorations, either. SkekZok could have said more (much more); SkekGra wasn’t half the geomancer the Ritual-Master was, or even SkekSo. They could, however, see this was an iterative progression: self-generating, yet branching and bending in a distinctly narrative way. Like a Gelfling dream-stitch, it clearly told a _story_ , probably even a decipherable one, given the right seed-numbers. For Thra’s sake, such a fuss over the past these Mystics made—you could take away UrGoh’s books and they could occupy themselves for a trine just rereading their own hide! Still, it was…pretty, the way any untraveled road is pretty.

What _was_ it like to shuffle around with an ancient manuscript for a skin, hunched under whatever burden it was that bent these creatures double? To walk the wildest roads knowing that if danger appeared, one was all but powerless to fight it off? Frightening to think of. Yet UrGoh had done it for an age and survived.

Could the Conqueror have ever hoped to lead an army, never mind _armies_ , in such a body—languid, almost totally herbivorous, with the perplexed air of some grazing beast that had lost its herd? They tried to picture it: there they were, gesturing imperiously from the floor, armor and weaponry weighing down that wizened frame even more. Thra, any reputable Gelfling commander would laugh. Unquestionably the enemy would. That, too, was a disturbing idea.

The Wanderer was… _not_ an idiot. That much had become clear over the unum. They were creative, resourceful. Their seeming lethargy disguised an intense attention to detail and a boundless capacity for appreciating the tiniest portions of life. Nor were they clumsy—one only had to watch them cook with all four arms, or draw mandalas, or set a crystal ball rolling and dancing over those long limbs to amuse and reassure some stranger they needed to trade with. But they _looked_ dull and docile at first glance, and in SkekGra’s world, anyone who could not impress at first glance was not likely to get a second.

Naturally, the Conqueror said none of this.

“It’s so big and thick.” The Skeksis winced as they heard themselves rehearsing the obvious, but pushed on. “I guess that’d be good for doing some things—not that I know what you all really _do_ besides cook, pick herbs and smoke…”

The Wanderer smiled faintly. “The others…don’t smoke much…”

SkekGra _tsked_ back, absently meeting cheek with cheek. They’d now resolved to test the touching—thing. Tracing a talon along one of the spirals was an experiment they quickly abandoned, however. The echo of an unseen claw running along their own skin unsettled them, and also gave the momentary impression of a stylus on a spinning stone message-cylinder, about to unspool some intimate narration of both their lives that the Skeksis was unprepared to hear. Even after they stopped, it felt like the line had now been invisibly etched into their own skin. No more of that.

They blinked up at UrGoh, who was studying them a bit as though _they_ were the tricky iterative progression. “And it’s—very warm.”

“Yes,” the UrRu agreed mildly. _Yes yes I know_ , thought SkekGra (they believed they were saying it aloud, but they weren’t), _I’m reporting the news, be kind, this is just a little strange._

They made a loose fist on top of the Wanderer’s palm, being very careful with their talons. Then they closed the Mystic’s long fingers over it, so that their entire hand was enfolded in the warmth. Yes, there it was. SkekGra was warm and cold, comforter and comforted, container and contained. The awareness of owning each state mostly flickered back and forth, but sometimes suspended itself perfectly at a point that was both in-between and nowhere. It made their heart rise in their throat, the same heady mix of delight and fear that they felt on the verge of battle. Oh, no. They didn’t stand a chance if this was how it was going to be.

And their inner SkekZok was commenting again, dispassionately, that a lot might be “done” in metaphysical terms with a powerful resonance like this, if of course one didn’t mind the risk of annihilating memory and identity and going against everything the Skeksis stood for.

“I _like_ warmth well enough,” SkekGra continued, in a somewhat brittle feint at a conversational tone. “I like to bask in the suns’ light. Or a fire, on a cold night after watch. Too much, though, can be…smothering.”

The UrRu’s brows tilted back and forth, puzzled, then seeming to realize something, then puzzled again. They glanced down at their hand still covering SkekGra’s, as if wondering, _then why are you sitting here being smothered?_ Or maybe _why are you still making words when none of them are about this stupefying thing that’s happening to us both?_ But it was true. Too much of that warm, sad, all-seeing amber gaze _was_ smothering. The Conqueror didn’t know anymore what not enough of it was.

With an effort, SkekGra made themselves look right into the eyes of their light half.

“I never hated you.” It was a soft, blurted admission, almost a confession. “By the way.”

UrGoh opened their mouth, shook their head in apology as words at first refused to come out.

“…I see that,” they said at last.

So warm, that hand. It felt like a tiny sun.

SkekGra drew in a slightly shaky breath. “I just wanted you—off my back. I wanted to be _myself_ , to be free, no more worry or guilt or—burdens to carry.”

The Mystic was frankly staring at them now.

“I guess…I left those behind with you,” the Skeksis finished quickly, then found they couldn’t leave it there after all and added grudgingly: “Never asked if you wanted them.”

They gave their counterpart a few long moments to be dumbfounded. It seemed only polite. Then they gently disengaged their hand. The bizarre feeling of double suspension, of superimposition faded at once. Normalcy returned, feeling, for the moment, like an abnormality. They worked their fingers—they were quite tempted to vigorously shake out their arms and hands as well, but didn’t want to give offense with the impression that they were shaking some vile contamination off. Instead, they got up and set back to work tying up all the bundles that still needed to be bundled, then donning the parts of their armor they wore for daily travel.

“Well,” said the Conqueror brusquely, “good. That’s done, we didn’t _explode_...”

The Wanderer distinctly looked as if they were still waiting for their mind to return to coming when called, but they began to get up as well—gazing blankly at the page they’d been working on, manifestly giving up on it, and carefully packing the little book away. The ink was dry, at least.

“First things…first…” they managed.

The Skeksis gave them an inquisitive look.

The Mystic answered it with the smallest smile. “Don’t…explode.”

“Oh.” SkekGra narrowed their eyes and tilted their head as though they were honestly considering the proposal on its merits.

“You know,” they then observed, “you’re not bad with a jest, if you could just _say_ them four times faster.”

For the rest of that day’s road, the Conqueror and the Wanderer each spent roughly equal amounts of time wondering whether the other was also feeling that indescribable cold-yet-warm in that hand again, just every now and then—and talking themselves out of bringing it back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, did this one get kinda Thinky. ^^

**Author's Note:**

> [NB – the prose and play-format pieces I’ll be throwing up on this "work" are mostly things that I do intend to make or get made as “Dialogues” comics *some*where down the line…but also feel the need to get down in some form while they’re still fresh in my head. (Why does writing have to be so much faster than drawing? :-( ) So these are essentially very lightly-edited drafts/placeholders. I won’t delete them when the corresponding comics are are up, however! They’ll just be marked as earlier versions or something.]
> 
> Note on pronouns: In the overall fandom SkekGra and UrGoh are usually referred to as "he's," and I tend to go along with that usage in that context, especially since canon companion material describes them that way as well; but I do actually prefer the original Word-of-God notion from Henson and Froud that Skeksis and (presumably) Mystics were neither male nor female but somewhere "in between," so in my prose stuff I'll be using "they" for both.


End file.
